Two towns share the Delaware at Lambertville, and they have been admiring each other across the water for generations. On the New Jersey bank stands Lambertville, all brick Victorian rows climbing the slope from the river; on the Pennsylvania side lies New Hope, linked by an old bridge you can walk or ride across in a minute. Either could be the stop on its own. Together, they make the best place on the Delaware River Scenic Byway for a long, unhurried lunch.
Lambertville has an easy, lived-in feel. Antiques shops fill the old warehouses and storefronts, the flea market on the edge of town is a regular draw, and every spring the town celebrates the shad that run up the river to spawn, a tradition older than most of its buildings. The canal that parallels the river, the Delaware and Raritan, was dug in the nineteenth century to carry coal and goods between the river and the sea, and its towpath is now a quiet footpath under sycamores. Walk a few hundred metres of it if you can, because the water and the trees do a great deal to settle a rider after the traffic.
The river road, Route 29 on the Jersey side, is a pleasant rather than a thrilling ride. It follows the river closely, with the Delaware on one side and low, wooded bluffs on the other, and the corners are gentle bends rather than challenges. Traffic can be heavy on weekend afternoons, especially near the bridge, so go early or midweek if you want the road to yourself. Not far upstream, at Washington Crossing, George Washington's army crossed the ice-choked river on a December night in 1776 before the attack on Trenton, and the park there keeps that story.
Lambertville is a proper town of a few thousand people, so fuel and food are not a worry, though parking on weekends can be a nuisance. Ewing, farther south toward Trenton, is the bigger place for anything unusual. Autumn, when the sycamores along the river go yellow, is the best season; summer is warm and humid, and winter leaves the byway quiet and sometimes icy in the shade.